THE BOOKS SHE READ
It was not a retired and quiet life that Harriet lived during her most
formative years. She was on an intellectual highway and at a crossroads
where many influences of the richest inspiration were felt.
The town attracted fine and interesting people from everywhere; and
from all of them she was receiving liberalizing influences that were
helping to make of her the great woman that she afterwards became.
In such a home circle as that of the Beechers, books were the very
breath of life. From 1799, when Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote were
married, they had taken the _Christian Observer_, a paper conducted by
Macaulay, Wilberforce and Hannah More, and they had always procured as
many books as they could afford of those that were mentioned in that
paper. A valuable encyclopedia came to the household as a gift from an
English gentleman whose daughters had boarded with the family. This
bulky and useful work was not, as is often the case in our day when the
public library is just around the corner, left to fall to pieces on
the dusty shelf, but it was made a constant source of reference in all
their lively discussions.
It may be thought that Harriet would have a constant resource in her
father’s library. This attic study did indeed afford her a harbor, but
his tastes and necessities were naturally for theological works and
the walls of his room were fairly choked with tall volumes for his own
use. Searching through such a library as this Harriet’s despairing
and hungry glances found only such titles as these: Bell’s “Sermons,”
Bogue’s “Essays,” Monnet’s “Inquiries,” Toplady on “Predestination,”
Housley’s “Tracts”--not such books as would do much toward feeding the
beauty-loving instinct of a gifted child.
One of the heroines in a book written by her when she was a woman is
described in this way: “She was well-read, well-bred, high-minded,
high-principled, a little inclined to be ultra-romantic, maybe.” We may
surely think of Harriet as fitting this definition, even including the
romantic inclination--that is, she was fond of stories of adventure,
and was full of high feelings and enthusiasms. It would not be strange
if the story-loving side of her nature bloomed a little shyly, since it
had been almost starved. But it could not die.
This spirit of lofty enthusiasm is illustrated by what she felt when
as a little girl she first heard the Declaration of Independence read.
She had but a vague idea of what it meant, but she gathered enough from
the recital of the abuses and injuries that had driven her nation to
revolt to feel herself swelling with indignation and ready with all
her little mind and strength to applaud what seemed the resounding
majesty of the Declaration. She was as ready as any one to pledge her
life, fortune and sacred honor for such a cause. The heroic element
was strong in her. It had come down from a line of Puritan ancestors;
when the little girl heard that document read the spirit of her father
swelled her little frame and brightened her cheeks and made her long
to do something, she scarce knew what, to fight for her country or
to make some declaration on her own account. This spirited child
needed food for the imagination and fancy. She needed contact with the
genius-lighted minds of the past. She had the power to assimilate a
great amount of intellectual food, and she was hungry for it.
The first satisfaction she had for her intense longing for what she
would call interesting reading was in the “Pilgrim’s Progress” of
Bunyan. We know how deeply this sank into her heart from the fact that
in the books she wrote she often illuminates her thought by some apt
illustration from the Pilgrim’s adventures. That her mind began very
early to be haunted by those memories of the Pilgrim we know from one
story about her youth.
It is related that sometimes when she was prowling about in the back
attic she would timidly open a little door that she found in the
side of the chimney and would peer into the dark abyss that yawned
within. Looking into that smoky and fearsome place, she was reminded
of the door that the Pilgrim found in the walls of a certain valley,
an opening which was the way that hypocrites go in at, whence issued
the scent of brimstone together with a rumbling noise as of fire. As
this thought came to Harriet she would shut to the little door in the
chimney with a bang and run away to a more friendly part of the house,
seeking some room that might perhaps be called a “Chamber of Peace.”
This name could certainly be applied to her father’s study. Harriet
loved that attic of her father’s with its quiet and its rows of
books. There she would cuddle down in a corner and watch her father
as he sat in his great writing chair with his Bible and his Cruden’s
“Concordance” and now and then whispered out his rapidly forming
sermon. She looked about upon those mysterious books with awe. To her
father there was evidently good magic in them, but to her their charm
was unrevealed. To be sure, from Harmer’s work on “Solomon’s Song”
and from a book called “The State of the Clergy during the French
Revolution,” she could gain some food for her hungry fancy. There was
also Cotton Mather’s “Magnalia,” that wonderful account of how this
plantation of New England was made so considerable in a space of time
so inconsiderable, a work that was a perfect storehouse of tales of
these strange old days. These were wonderful stories indeed! And they
were all about her own country, too, and made her feel that she herself
trod upon ground that was consecrated by some special dealings of God’s
Providence.
Nevertheless the story-loving side of little Harriet could never be
convinced that there were no more lively bits to be found among all
those unpromising black books. She sought perseveringly, and her
efforts were rewarded. In a side closet full of documents there was a
weltering ocean of pamphlets in which she dug and toiled for hours, to
be repaid by disinterring a delicious morsel of “Don Quixote” that had
once been a book, but was now lying in forty or fifty broken scraps
amid Calls and Appeals, Essays, Replies and Rejoinders. The turning up
of such a fragment, she thought, was like the rising of an enchanted
island out of an ocean of mud. Further searches in certain barrels of
old sermons brought to her a battered but precious copy of the “Arabian
Nights.” She was now happy; such books as these could be read and
re-read forever without ever palling.
We must remember that there were in those days no books written
specially for children and so arranged as to be interesting at each
step of the child’s growth. Harriet had to grow to the great books,
but as she had a very precocious and devouring mind she was fully
ready by the time that she discovered the Oriental story-book in the
bottom of the barrel, to read all the big words in _Scheherazade’s_
long-winded, fascinating tales.
It was Harriet Beecher’s good fortune that no silly or trashy
books were thrown in her way, to the injury or ruin of her mental
development. Under all these encouraging influences she grew with
astonishing rapidity, but in a perfectly simple and normal way.
Mrs. Stowe herself tells us in “The Minister’s Wooing” what was thought
to be the proper selection for the personal library of a well-taught
young lady of those times. Upon the snowy cover of the small table
under her looking-glass should lie “The Spectator,” “Paradise Lost,”
“Shakespeare” and “Robinson Crusoe.” Beside them of course the Bible
should rest. There should also be the works of Jonathan Edwards. Laid a
little to one side, as perhaps of doubtful reputation, might be found
the only novel which the stricter people in those days allowed for the
reading of their daughters, that seven-volumed, trailing, tedious,
delightful old bore, “Sir Charles Grandison”--a book whose influence
was almost universal and might be traced even in the epistolary style
of some grave divines.
A story is told of a certain young lady of Litchfield, probably a
devourer of such books as this, who was once going in the stage from
Litchfield to Hartford and happened to have Miss Sally Pierce, the
principal of the Female Academy, for traveling companion. Miss Pierce
recommended to the young lady the purchase of “Wilberforce’s View.” The
young lady took this advice, paying the sum of six shillings for the
work. Miss Pierce also suggested the “Memoirs of Miss Susanna Anthony”
which could be bought for three and six, and a book called “Reflections
on Death” which she declared to be very interesting as well as
instructive. We are not told that the young lady did not slip in also
“The Lady of the Lake,” which was just then becoming a fashionable book
in the hill towns of Connecticut, or even perhaps volume one of that
great romance, “Sir Charles Grandison.”
Harriet no doubt had books of the same solemn and metaphysical kind
recommended to her by her beloved teacher, but decidedly not the
seven-volume novel. We do not know that Harriet had a little room to
herself and a small library of her own. But she must have read that
classic novel some time, or how could she have pronounced it a bore?
Besides this, we know that once when she was almost an old lady she
stood on her feet with bonnet on and read a chapter of “Sir Charles”
through to the end, oblivious of the fact that she was keeping a dinner
party waiting for her to come.
Fortunately for Harriet with her strong literary instincts, the tastes
of her mother were more catholic than were those of her theological
father; she included philosophical, scientific and poetic books among
her favorites. In one of her letters to her sister-in-law she said:
“May has, I suppose, told you of the discovery that the fixed alkalies
are metallic oxyds. I first saw the notice in the _Christian Observer_
and have since seen it in the _Edinburgh Review_.” Her eager mind led
her to add: “I think this is all the knowledge I have obtained in the
whole circle of the arts and sciences of late; if you have been more
fortunate, pray let me have the benefit.”
To Mrs. Beecher a new interesting book was an event, heard of across
the ocean, watched for as one watches for the rising of a new planet;
and while the English packet was slowly laboring over, bearing it to
our shores, expectation in the family was rising. When the book was to
be found in the city book stores an early copy generally found its way
to the family circle in Litchfield. Miss Edgeworth’s “Frank” came, and
was read aloud to their great edification. Many a box of books appeared
through the thoughtfulness of Uncle Samuel, who always selected the
latest and most interesting things. “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” and
“Marmion” made an epoch by their arrival; they were read in the home
with wild enthusiasm, and afterwards spouted in glorious hours by the
children. Can we take ourselves back to the freshness of a time when
a letter from the mountains to a New Haven sister could contain this
message: “John brought ‘The Vision of Roderick,’ a poem by Scott. Do
tell me about Scott.” There was an eager, unjaded appetite in that
mountain town that would give a rapturous welcome to such a poem as
the “Lady of the Lake,” such a novel as “Ivanhoe.” These were the days
when the heart of the world was being periodically agitated by the
appearance of a new Waverley novel; it was the time, too, of Moore,
Southey, Wordsworth, and, above all, of Byron.
Ah, Byron! It was the day of Byron, too. Over the sea came the rolling
rhythms, the bravado and the mockery of the wonderful living poet. Over
the sea came, too, the Byronic melancholy and the loose, waving Byronic
necktie. The sensitive young attendants of the Law School suffered from
the one and wore the other. We know that they suffered from the Byronic
melancholy, for Dr. Beecher preached against it; and this time he did,
as he used to say, take hold without mittens. He preached cut and
thrust, hip and thigh, and did not ease off. His sermon was closed with
an eloquent lamentation over the wasted life and misused powers of the
great poet.
Meantime Harriet, then eleven years old, had found a stray volume
of Byron’s “Corsair.” Her aunt had given it to her one afternoon to
appease her craving for something to read. This poem astonished and
electrified her. She kept calling to her aunt to hear the wonderful
things she found in it and to ask what they meant. “Aunt Esther, what
does this mean: ‘One I never loved enough to hate’?” “Oh, child, it’s
one of Byron’s strong expressions,” said her aunt. That day Harriet
went home full of dreaming about Byron, and after that she listened
to everything that was said about him at the table. She heard her
father tell about his separation from his wife, and one day he said,
“My dear, Byron is dead--gone!” Then after a minute he added, “Oh, I
am sorry that Byron is dead. I did hope he would live to do something
for Christ. What a harp he might have swept!” That afternoon Harriet
took her basket and went up to the strawberry field on Chestnut Hill.
But she was too dispirited to do anything. She lay in the daisies and
looked up into the blue sky and thought of the great eternity into
which Byron had entered, and wondered how it might be with his soul.
It is interesting to recall that Harriet’s great English contemporary,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who afterward became the greatest of women
poets and was one of Mrs. Stowe’s dear friends, at almost the same time
was also mourning in a beautiful poem that “’midst the shriekings of
the tossing wind,” “the dark blue depths” he sang of were then bearing
all that remained of Byron to his native shore.
Harriet would probably know by instinct that no novel would be
approved by her father for the children. So we can imagine her joy when
one day he brought a novel of Scott’s to her brother George, saying
that, though he generally disapproved of such books as trash, yet in
these he could see that there were real genius and real culture and
therefore he would remove his ban upon them.
In that summer Harriet and her brother read “Ivanhoe” through seven
times, and they were both able to recite many scenes _verbatim_ from
beginning to end. They dramatized it all. They named the rocks and
glens and rivers about Litchfield by names borrowed from “The Lady of
the Lake”; they clambered among the rocks of Benvenue and sailed on the
bosom of the Loch Katrine, using Chestnut Hill and the Great and Little
Pond for the purpose. In the reading circles among the law students and
among the young ladies they discussed Scott’s treatment side by side
with that of Shakespeare, and compared the poetry of Scott and Byron.
In the family all this great new poetry was read aloud--which is indeed
the best and only way to get the good of poetry. And though Harriet’s
father was necessarily most interested in theological argument and
discussion, he, too, was fond of poetry and read it with wonderful
expression. Harriet thought it the greatest possible treat to hear
him read passages from that world-poem, “Paradise Lost.” Especially
was she moved when he read the account of _Satan’s_ marshaling of his
forces of fallen angels. The courage and fortitude of Milton’s _Satan_
enlisted her in his favor, and when her father came to the passage
beginning
Millions of spirits for his fault amerced
Of Heaven,
and ending with the lines,
Attention held them mute.
Thrice he essay’d, and thrice, in spite of scorn,
Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth,
her father himself burst into tears and the reading was ended for that
day. Perhaps that poem was a favorite with Dr. Beecher because Milton’s
confessed object in writing had been to “justify the ways of God to
man,” and this was a theme that would appeal strongly to the great
preacher.
Of course, if one were to speak of the books that were read by the
future author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” one would have to name first
and foremost the one that was the daily and almost hourly study and
reading and talk of all members of the Beecher home, the Bible. What
Harriet Beecher Stowe thought of that book is written at large in all
her works. Especially in the novel, “My Wife and I,” she takes occasion
to speak of what she thinks it means to a young man to have a thorough
knowledge in the mind and the heart of that world-embracing book. It
may be said also that her own books express in their content the spirit
of the Bible. When later in life Mrs. Stowe traveled in the mountains
of Switzerland, she said that she rejoiced every hour while among those
scenes in her familiarity with the language of the Bible, for there
alone could she find vocabulary and images to express her feelings of
wonder and awe!